


Quod Tu Es

by lobsterkaijin



Series: Exsanguinatus [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, Gen, Historical Fantasy, Religious Cults, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 18:54:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20710877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobsterkaijin/pseuds/lobsterkaijin
Summary: She tells him what he is, because she is a good mother.





	Quod Tu Es

She’s loud.

Laboured breaths lick the ground where she lays chained and wasteful, a heap of bones and ash, flat limbs sawed crooked by rust, limbs she cannot lift on her own, that she frequently demands _ him _ to carry for her. To eat, to bathe, to strike. Useless on her own, a pitiful mess of a woman. She never does anything now, except for breathing too loudly and weeping. Sleep has never blessed her, and so he too must endure it, sitting back to the wall with a book perched on his knees.

“You—” A meager thing, her voice withers from her throat. "_You_—”

“Mama, can you be quiet? I’m trying to read.”

Another sob wracks her body. Gods, what a selfish woman. Shushing her, he flips another tea-stained page, wondering if there’s one on getting someone to stop crying. The chapter on non-lethal methods, with pages stuck together, sticky with dried blood, hangs at the back of the book, tattered and torn and tied to the spine on amputated twine. It’s the only book he has, and she’s pulled the pages out again and again. Driving a wooden stake into her palm corrected this misstep, and she hasn’t touched it since. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like the non-lethal chapter. She won’t ever see miserable release.

Her lungs breed dust. “Damn you, wretch!” Her voice splinters. “Come over here.”

His eyes fall on an illustration of a woman hung upside down with her tongue clamped between the throngs of a red-hot iron, as a blacksmith holds a steady sword. He giggles at the woman’s tears falling on the executioner’s sandals, an illustration he added himself. This would make her unable to speak, but it wouldn’t make her stop crying.

“I _ said_—”

The next section shows a woman’s eyes being gouged out, with one already having been plucked, and the other hanging by a thread. The caption on the method states that the lacrimal glands were removed as well, so as to prevent the salt from the tears cleaning the wound. This would get her to stop physically crying, but she’d still be able to disturb him with her yelling.

The chains shift. She’s pulled herself up. “Listen to your mother.”

Removing the vocal cords is an attractive option. She could sniffle all she wants without having a voice to wail with. He didn’t have any implements precise enough to do the trick, however, and so he risked killing her. Well, he didn’t want her _ dead, _ just quiet.

“Vittorio, answer your mother!”

_ “Child, go to the wench. Her caterwauling is insufferable.” _

Vittorio places his book down and goes to her. Brittle projections that used to resemble fingers reach out to him, and he ducks out of the way. This frustrates her. She almost dislocates her shoulders screeching and clawing at him. “Vittorio! _ Vittorio!_” Her body is as weak as the brain, soul powering a husk, a shell, a cracked and peeling exoskeleton. Two compound eyes bulge from her face, bloodshot, oozing a foul, yellow viscosity, reflecting nothing back at him. Dried blood and drool cling to the side of her mouth, joined by new layers frothing from her lips. They look nothing alike, thank the gods. “Vittorio, get over here!”

He answers blankly. “What do you want?”

“You came because _ he _ told you to, didn’t you?”

“Who?”

A roar is ripped from her throat. “_Him! _ The demon that speaks to you in the night! The reason you were made!”

Vittorio yawns. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She collapses to her knees in a fit of hysterical sobs. “This child, _ oh! _ Videren blind me! What have I done to deserve this?” Throwing herself on the floor, curses and praises and begging and pleading rise above her bowed head. She was lied to, taken advantage of, didn’t know what she was agreeing to. She never wanted this. She can’t stand to look at the child. All she ever does is complain.

_ “Poor woman, she really thinks she had a choice in this."_

Vittorio leans down and pulls her by the hair, forcing her to sit up and look at him. “You’re a disgrace. Get up and carry yourself with a little dignity, _ please._”

Gods, what a simpering fool, whimpering and crying, fat tears collecting dirt as they rolled down her face. Pathetic, ugly, disgusting. How are they related? When will he be let out of here?

“Vittorio...”

“_What, _ mama?”

It starts out as a meek giggle. Her shoulders tremble with the effort of even that. Then it grows, takes hold of her ribcage and pushes out, bleeds her dry of her breath, snaps her throat, throws back her head in a chorus of screams and sighs and a particularly strained, high-pitched sound that cannot come from anything human. “You don’t know what you are.” Vittorio tilts his head. “But _ I _ do.”

His interest piqued, he lets go of her. “What are you talking about?”

She cranes her head, a wild, toothy grin on her face. “I know everything about you, my darling, my love. I know what you are, I know who you are.” Her hand trails along his chest. “What runs through you.” Her hands rest over his throat. “But _ you _ don’t know _ anything!_”

He pulls away. “That’s not true, you’re speaking nonsense.”

“You don’t know anything!” She’s singing.

She’s delusional, she’s unhinged. That must be it. She’s never had a lucid thought since he was born. All she speaks is of the fragments of despair in her drugged up brain. Of course she’s speaking nonsense, it’s the only way her brain knows how to work.

“I can’t _ imagine _ what it must be like to not know who or what you are!”

Vittorio’s teeth clench. “Mama, _ stop _ it.”

“_Oh, _ so _ now _ the word ‘stop’ has meaning to you?”

He slaps her, pulls her by the hair, is seething. “You are so _ annoying. _ I should kill you.”

“I’ll tell you what you are, darling, because I’m a good mother, aren’t I?”

Vittorio throws her to the ground, and returns to his seat by the wall. She can go on all she likes, he’s going to return to his reading. This time he flips to the lethal torture methods, and looks for one specifically designed to inflict the most pain on a woman.

_ “Child, mind your mother!” _

He rolls his eyes and obeys, in time to see his mother brandishing a bronze knife. Where did she—

“You know what you are, my love?” She presses the blade against her throat, and smiles. “You’re a _ monster._” 

The skin splits apart under the blade, though at first nothing comes out, hesitant, as it always is when a body’s been drained far too many times. She only manages to go halfway before her eyes roll into her skull, and she sinks to the floor. That is when the blood comes, a river filling every space, every tile on the floor, until the summoning circle is filled, and then it overflows, spills over onto the tapestry, the chairs, and under his legs. Her body twitches, she sputters and gargles, limbs twisting around her head and neck. The body isn’t sure what’s happening, why she’s dying like this, but the spirit knows, and the spirit clings to one last measure of strength. She reaches out for him, then fades away with her eyes fixated on him.

Vittorio shifts, but doesn’t otherwise move from his spot, regardless of the blood that is soaking his tunic. “Women are so dramatic.”

A rumbling laugh fills his ears.


End file.
